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Welcome back to a new series.

Welcome back.

Welcome.

Of Three Been Silent, the show where three men talk about a topic, but first we have a short, although sometimes longer than the topic, chat about how we've been.

Yeah.

And we've got some big news.

Mike has got an opium habit.

That is true, actually.

Yes.

That is true.

I've got it right here is my um

here's my little bottle of um of or of oral morphine oh wow it's quite a big bottle let's have a look at that there you go oral morph i'll give you a little for the listener is that below the below the counter sort of oh yeah yeah yeah right around these parts yeah yeah yeah i didn't see that as a main mainstream medicine it feels it's more like silk wars era there's my syringe so i can put it wherever i like it oh wow

why do you need a syringe well it comes with a dosing spoon

again it's it's a different era this is victorian medicine isn't it dosing spoons haven't been used for hundreds of years no but dosing spoon

dosing spoon is fine for your your sticky your cowpoles your lactulose for example you know your thick glooby stool softeners and so on but for the more watery oromorph that'll just go everywhere and and half of your sweet stuff will be down your trousers before you know it So if you want to measure out the dose for a non-lossy dragon chase

syringe every time.

If you get that kind of stuff on your trousers, it's a liquid, isn't it?

But with

so many of the qualities of a solid, it's almost because they're so thick and gloopy, isn't it?

It's like

you're wet with solid.

But Mike's saying it's not gloopy.

He's saying that it's not gloopy enough to be on a spoon.

Well, often we talk at cross-purposes.

That's part of the podcast.

It's on brand.

Mike, have you been saying non-gloopy the whole time?

The auromorph is non-gloopy.

The dosing spoon is good for the gloopy, but that's why I went, I grabbed, I got a syringe instead because I was losing my precious sweet stuff down on Chino's.

I don't want to waste a drop, you understand.

So, Mike, genuinely, what is an auromorph?

It's morphine.

It just means oral morphine.

It's just liquid, liquid morphine.

And what is the difference between I've never entered this morphine and heroin?

Heroin is illegal.

This is the important bit, Deben.

Heroin is illegal.

Okay?

Heroin is illegal manufactured.

They belong to the same family, opiates, the opiates, opioids from the opiates from the poppy.

It's the same drug, same process, but that's like heroin is a sort of highly refined and

usually injected, occasionally smoked form of opiate.

It is illegal and not controlled.

And it's just what it's known

as on the street.

You may also call it smack, horse,

scas,

scas,

Mrs.

Bitcherman's fun cream, Auntie Herbert's whoopsies, exactly.

We can

we can go on and on.

So, an oromorph.

So, so, Mike, are you inject because it's quite.

I've never heard of anyone needing to inject a liquid into their own mouth.

Normally, you just drink you might do that for like a puppy or a kitten.

Yes, yeah, exactly.

I've done it for bluebell, in fact.

I have injected liquids into blue buzzer.

Bluebell,

bluebell,

soft and gentle, and wise and kind.

Bluebell,

Bluebell.

Sturdy paws and silky thighs.

Bluebell.

There she flies

like a furry star.

Well, there we go.

I'm treating myself as well as you would treat Bluebell.

But that's because Bluebell, in that situation, is very hard to control.

She needs like three or four loving hands, you know, gently holding her down.

Yes, yes, yes, again, same, same,

same with you.

It needs to be caressed from several sides.

There's a lot of stuff like shouting things like, oh, no, we've got too much of it in the fur.

That also happens, or down the ears or on the floor.

And yeah, maybe he'll maybe he'll lick some of the stuff up that's on the floor.

And is that enough?

Does that count?

Do we need to go again?

Yeah.

All of that is happening.

And also, while doing it, often there'll be a

subset conversation going on about, you know, by the way, hopefully we'll get all this liquid in on a separate topic.

Are they still sitting in the bath?

and and do you ever enter him for shows have you considered entering him for shows

so you inject it into your mouth so so has it got it's got a thick nozzle can you show it again sorry it's got a thick nozzle has it well the syringe yeah

it's just a syringe just your it's just your commonal garden it doesn't have a pin at the end it doesn't have a needle no no it's just a syringe so you inject it into your mouth yeah so it's

a non-lossy process i know exactly how much i'm i'm i'm giving myself okay

i'm in control you understand i I mean, that's such control of the situation.

Mike,

why have you started taking medicine-grade smack?

I've smashed my ribs up.

You are going to need to play the jingle because this is a classic middle-aged provincial man situation.

Here we go.

It's time for provincial dads chat.

Who's hid my bloody walking boots?

I'm not saying it's ruined the holiday, I'm just saying I asked for rum raisin.

Get your skates on kids, otherwise we'll miss the inflatable session.

She's taking her mother to see Blood Brothers, which means more top gear time for me.

Why would I need to go and see a podiatrist?

Of course I've kept the warranty information, darling.

Was it in an argument with another man over the benefits or not of those egg barbecue sets and to just turn into a fist fight?

Was it that?

It's funny that you mentioned egg specifically because the story sort of begins with egg.

Egg is the tortoise who lives next door.

Egg has gone missing.

What?

So we're putting out, this is a bean announcement, listen, this is a bean public safety announcement.

We're putting out.

If you see egg, do not approach.

Just call the authorities.

We don't know which authorities that would be.

Just call any authority you can think of hopefully they'll refer you to because the authorities they know each other they know what they do just keep going tortures do tend to fall through the through the gaps in the emergency service isn't it that's not strictly no it's probably not the nhs or the fire brigade

unless it's incredibly dgse we don't really know exactly who it is necessarily but the rac could be the rac could be the mounties we're not quite sure

so is it that your next door neighbor came around said we've we've lost our tortoise egg they looked at your face saw your new um tortoise shell horn rimmed reading glasses put two and two together and started smashing your ribs

yeah i mean that's one version of the story absolutely yeah you're you're bang on you shouldn't have opened the door openly eating your cereal out of your your tortoiseshell out of my prey's own bowl yeah

it was self-bowled and mounting his little head on that little wooden plinth Okay,

I'm not against it as an idea, but you shouldn't have had it as your front door knocker.

It's just arrogant i mean you saw it as hiding in plain sight i suppose he won't suspect

i've got a tortoise head door knocker on the same day his tortoise has got this thing it's too perfect in a way that's that's why he'll know i'm innocent he'll have to

he'll have to discount me from the beginning

okay but anyway so got so so matt i said mike sorry um yeah mike mike I shouldn't have that bone.

That's okay.

Do you know what I mean?

It's all right.

It's only been, I mean, how many series are we in?

It is a common name.

They're both common names, aren't they?

They're both big letters.

And the M starting name as well.

Aren't they?

No, but also the great thing about listening to podcasts is it's just like listening in on three good old friends.

Isn't it?

That's one of the nice things about listening to a podcast.

When you're that close, it doesn't matter if you know what someone's name is or not.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Anyway, they're gone.

So Egg is missing.

Egg's missing.

Egg is missing.

Egg has had his pre-hibernation ablutions.

What does that mean?

Does that mean he's gone to the toilet?

He's had a big old shit.

He gets sort of lathered.

He gets sort of salon treatment.

He quite likes it, apparently.

But before the hype, he's about to go down for his winter hibernation, is he?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, for which he's got a special hutch,

it's all done.

It's all laid up.

It's real nice.

It's tricked out.

And he's had his like spa.

He has a kind of spa session.

Pre-hibernation spa treatments, the works.

And then he was left unattended briefly.

And he's recently learned to climb, astonishingly.

So he just sort of clambers those little boundary walls.

We assume so.

That's extraordinary.

I've never seen a tortoise climbing up a wall.

If I'm really starting to feel that someone's lying, if I'm collecting witness statements, the bit about the self-taught.

This is all account number one.

This is account number one.

You've literally never

all over again.

Unless he's a drug killer, unless he's a.

You think he can transform?

into a man that can transform as into a bat,

unless he's a vampire,

yeah, unless he's like another option, he might be a vampire tortoise.

I don't know.

Because I'm just remembering the bit in Dracula where he's the count is seen climbing up the wall of the castle.

It's quite an unnerving moment.

In the form of a tortoise.

Form of a tortoise.

Mike, this is really reminding me of.

I'm currently massively into true crime podcasts.

Oh, yeah.

Finger on the pulse.

Apparently, a lot of murders actually go unsolved.

I guess this is just really reminding me of, I feel like I'm listening to one of my true rhyme pods.

Well, I think, yet, I think you've bang on there because, like them, there is no satisfactory ending to this anecdote.

And

it's not worth the time it's already taking.

Well, if it helps find egg.

Well, this is the thing.

So there's been a big egg hunt going on, basically, throughout like

our little garden, their garden.

There's a few gardens where we think he's gone to, he's found somewhere to hibernate.

What we're hoping is that he's found somewhere else to hibernate.

And he'll re-emerge next spring.

But for love nor money, we cannot find him anywhere.

Obviously, there are other fears, dread fears, but we don't know.

He's been non-human trafficked.

Well, yeah, exactly.

I don't know.

He might be working as an enforcer in Bosnia or something.

We don't know.

Sorry, sorry, to backtrack.

Had he already had the spa treatment or was he about to have the spa treatment?

He had, he was ready to go.

So maybe he's in the tortoise world.

Maybe he's really sexy at the moment.

Oh, yeah.

And he's just making the most of that.

Yeah.

But is that when you can't imagine if that's when you feel horniest as a tortoise?

If you've

had sort of pre-hibernation feeding frenzy, even if you have just had your back crack and sack done or whatever the tortoise equivalent of that is.

It's mainly shell waxing, isn't it?

I guess.

Shell waxing and buffing.

So also, they're quite, animals are quite particular about times of year, aren't they, for reproductions?

I imagine that's spring.

Because of the spring spring tortoises that you see gamboling in the fields.

Yeah.

Every March.

Wearing their little sexy little bonnets.

Sexy little bonnets.

And just very sort of wide, squat, high heels, the females will sometimes wear.

Quite tight chinos, the

men will wear quite tight chinos, the males.

Do you think that's the key, Henry, to be successful, isn't it?

Tight chinos.

Tight chinos.

But often there's a lot of confusion as to whether it's a four whether it's a four trunk trouser or a two trunk trouser isn't it we don't want to do that a bit again as to whether the front two legs are actually arms

in which case it's leather driving gloves that we wear

but for me the the the big true crime mystery here really is how do we go from missing tortoise to smashed up ribs So I was, the garden is quite sort of narrow, is the thing.

It's narrow.

And there's bushes on either side.

And on my hands and knees trying to sort of find locations where egg was.

Mike, did the thought go through your mind?

Think like egg.

Of course.

You're going to find egg.

Become egg.

Yeah.

So you've put yourself in for a spa tree.

Why I made love to a female tortoise

and then hid under a bowl.

Yeah.

But none of it worked.

But it was, through neglect, I'm not a very good gardener and through the neglect of the various bushes and brambles that have overgrown a a bit i i was making the search even harder so i thought i've got to hack some of this back so i began hacking some back and having begun hacking something back i noticed there was that we've got this sort of bay tree thing that again has been neglected so it's going quite high and broad and it's taking up a lot of space i thought i'm going to lop off the top of that so i got my

how's that going to help there's no way that that this climbing tortoise is well you think walls aren't enough for him he's that upper tree i don't think he was nesting but this is mission creep mike classic mission exactly exactly.

It's classic mission creep, and so I've got my sort of extendable kind of mega hedge saw thing, a sort of a long thing with a kind of

kind of saw thing on the edge.

It's mission creep, but it's also Mike going, I finally got an opportunity to use that bloody

metal, slightly

very phallic.

Let's face it, I've actually, I'm gonna draw, I've drawn balls on it.

I've drawn, it's an overtly phallic machine that I get to use,

isn't it?

Oh, Mike, yes, exactly.

So, I've got the cocksaw, and you've got the cockswa, but I needed needed to get up a quiet.

I was on like a seven-foot-high platform ladder to try and get it.

No one else was about.

And so no one else was there to steady it.

But I did think, oh, it seems to be reasonable.

I'll put it near a wall and then maybe if it falls that way.

This is such a blundering approach to the delicate game of chess, essentially, which is finding a lost tortoise.

I mean,

it's about empathy.

It's about psychology.

And you are just the absolute, you're like the sort of the baddies in avatar.

You're like, just get more choppers in.

Take down the whole garden.

But we'll have no babe.

Our sources.

Take it down.

So

I got up to the top of that.

I was, was, was reached, had to reason up with my arms to try and.

So I know what happens next, Mike.

What happens next?

You're at the top of the seven-foot ladder.

You've got the long chainsaw on a stick.

Yeah.

You're about to chop off the top of the tree.

You look down.

Who's at the bottom of the ladder?

It's egg.

Pushing it over.

Just giving it a little nudge.

Well, I predictably then went completely A over T and just fell immediately and landed.

I did, I mean, the earth was quite soft, but I did land on a brick.

But my first thought was,

sweet mother of God, please let that be a brick and not the tortoise.

Thank God.

What a moment when you had to check, when you had to reach underneath yourself.

Yeah, and see what was dug into my flank.

And you pulled it out.

And what was undoubtedly the dead eyes of a beheaded tortoise in your hand.

And you're like, I'm going to have to tell quite the anecdote on the podcast to cover this up.

Oh, God, yeah.

You fell onto a brick.

Yeah.

And yeah, in the words of a mutual friend of ours, Ben,

I smash fucked myself.

You smashed myself.

But it was kind of fun.

That was on the Saturday, and it was sort of all right.

So I was just sort of hobbling about and it was just sort of a bit painful.

I sort of couldn't be bothered to deal with it because there was nothing can be done.

But then two days later, I absentmindedly, I sort of twisted.

It was on the left, really.

I twisted to the right to pick something up off the floor.

And there's a movement I shouldn't have done.

And as I did so, there was a sort of

sound

from my rib cage on the left, accompanied by the most extraordinary pain I've ever experienced in my life.

Oh, my God.

Basically, I think the

my rib cage went mew

opened up like the jaws of a hungry, hungry hippo.

Oh, I couldn't move for a bit.

Oh, my God.

So, that pain, was that your rib digging into like your liver or something?

Well, your spleen.

Ben Ami.

Ben, what you're forgetting is how hard it is to digest an average-sized male adolescent tortoise

and

what it does to your term organs.

Especially if it's had to be eaten in a hurry, swallowed whole, for example.

Of course, this is all an elaborate story.

It's an elaborate story.

I wasn't sure what I'd done to myself.

I mean, I already thought from the original injury that I hadn't, for example, punctured my spleen because I hadn't died in the night on Saturday nights.

Yeah.

Right.

So hang on, where is your spleen?

I don't know where my spleen is, really.

To me, I thought the spleen, isn't that one of those medieval organs which doesn't really exist?

It was just made up.

It was a medieval mistake.

It was made up by Gerald de Monmouth.

Isn't it Gerald de Monmouth thing?

It's like, oh, his spleen must be hard.

Bleed his eyes.

That is true, but it is so pivotal to

both literature and religious iconography that

the truth can't come out on any account.

Yes, exactly.

It would just mean too much rethinking.

It's too big to collapse, basically.

It's like HSBC.

I can picture lungs, I can picture brain, I can picture pancreas.

Although when I picture,

I always quickly picture some pancrestation and then have to work back from there.

Well back from there.

But I can't really picture spleen.

What is it exactly?

It's odd to hear that because out of the three of us, I mean, admittedly, I've studied, but you're the only person who would have been paid to draw a spleen.

I've illustrated a book about the internal organs and I can't remember the spleen.

Yeah, I literally can't remember the spleen.

If anyone who should have been able to visualize it, I know.

Or

is it erased?

Is it dumped?

Once you've drawn something, is that have you expelled it from your mind?

No, normally I would remember.

I'm just wondering, think, Henry, Cedric, is it Cedric the spleen?

What have you got?

Cedric the spleen.

I think it was Cedric the spleen, and he was portrayed as he was a medieval sort of ironmonger.

That's how I portrayed him.

What does the spleen do?

It sort of cleans up your blood, basically.

Oh, it cleans your blood.

I thought that was the liver.

Liver does a bit of that kind of stuff.

Liver also processes what what you've eaten.

Like it'll your blood will throw through what you've absorbed from your intestines and clean out any sort of toxins and all that kind of stuff.

But it yeah, filth spleen will filter blood, make white blood cells for infection.

Control.

But you can live without it, right?

You can, but be back in the day, if you'd had a splenectomy from like a bad injury, then then you'd have to have like

lots of vaccines and lifelong antibiotics and stuff.

It was a real hassle.

Oh, okay.

I don't think that happens very often these days.

Was your spleen punctured, did you say?

No.

No.

No.

And I, which I worked out by not being dead.

Okay.

So, yeah, so that's all.

It was on Monday that I then went in to get myself,

double-checked to make sure I hadn't done myself a bonus mischief.

And I hadn't done a bonus, but

that's when they gave me some of the sweet stuff.

They were amazing, actually, in A ⁇ E.

They were awesome.

And they fixed me up in short order and give me some sweet, sweet painkillers.

Any provincial middle-aged man story of this nature has to involve at least a 48-hour waiting to go to seek any kind of medical help.

Yeah, because there's other stuff you want to get done in the meantime.

Yeah.

It'll be fine.

It'll be fine.

It'll be fine, darling.

I'll just hold on to my lower jaw and move it up and down when I need to speak.

But then there's a lot of just denial, isn't there, about needing medical help in in that situation.

It's okay, darling.

We've got two spleens, haven't we?

Only one.

Oh, okay.

No.

Probably just borrow a spleen off Gerald, can't I?

What would you mean?

No, and also we don't know anyone called Gerald.

You're right.

I thought this is true.

So, when you mentioned just being in AE, did you explicitly mention balancing your humours or black bile and any of that?

Yeah, yeah, they covered all of my humours.

I had an excess of orange phlegm,

an excess of the bile of vice.

But otherwise, the other things were balanced and they sort of bled me from the back.

That was fine.

And all you have to do is eat a bishop's turd every Thursday now, isn't it?

Out of his mitre.

But he can't know you're doing it.

So it's quite, it's actually going to take quite a lot of organising every time.

So

I want to know, I want to know

so many darned questions, Mike.

Really?

Okay.

So one thing I want to know is, how did you land on the brick?

So which bit of your body hit the brick?

My back, my sort of left side of my back, the sort of left flank.

Okay.

Because did you have time?

Because when you're falling,

often it feels like time's standing still, they say, doesn't it?

You've got time to think about it.

Did you see any sort of highlights of your friendship with me, that kind of thing?

You weren't in the slideshow, I'm sorry to say.

Okay, fine.

That's okay.

It's quite a short fall.

It's quite quite a short fall, isn't it?

It's in your papers.

It was a short fall.

If it had been a nine-footer, if it was a nine-footer.

But

I was mostly had time to reflect that if I was about to do myself a life-changing injury,

this is an absolutely pathetic way of doing it.

Yeah, and just not anecdote-worthy enough.

You were looking for a tortoise.

And that's why you went up the tree to cut the top off.

I'm sorry, Mike.

Me and I've talked to David Cameron.

The Prime Minister.

I've come to the previous,

I've talked to the ex-Tory Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary.

And neither of us are interested in investing in your uplifting film about how you've dealt with all your medical problems because of the fact that

the key incident is you looking for a lost talk by shaving the top off a bay tree.

It means this is never going to be turned into an uplifting story.

I'm sorry.

So David Cameron doesn't want to invest in his trust, doesn't want to invest.

It's too much to explain.

It's too waffly.

It's too woolly.

It's too woolly.

It doesn't make sense.

I don't know why you're approaching ex-prime ministers as well for investment.

We're not.

Kwatang is out.

Kwatang actually is the only one.

He's actually quite interested, which is a very bad sign.

Dragon mind how bad the mini budget was.

He wants a product placement angle.

He's going to basically have to be carrying a copy of his book in every single scene.

As does every other character in the movie.

So Egg remains missing.

Egg remains missing.

But hopefully, as you say, he's just.

There are lots of sweet spots in this.

It's credible that he could have found a really good, cozy spot.

Because there's no actual predices for a tortoise, right?

In Britain?

Well, I didn't, but I could have.

I wouldn't put it past a fox, just, you know, just in the name of chaos.

Do you know what I mean?

But couldn't they just retreat into their shell and then a fox has got nothing?

What if it, well, unless it sort of turns the shell over a bit and sort of pokes in one of the holes a bit.

Or,

Mike, or Ben, if it,

well, like, obviously the London urban urban foxes are a different breed now.

Well, they have access to bangers, don't they?

They have access to bangers.

See, like a couple of bangers, one in each limb, two in the back legs hole, two in the front arms hole, or front legs holes, one down the head hole.

That tortoise is coming out pretty fast.

But these are kind of Devon foxes.

These are just, you know,

charming country foxes.

Luscious, charming cannon.

Aaron sweater wearing.

Very much so.

Well, best of luck to egg.

That's the main thing that we're doing.

Yeah, good luck, egg.

So tell me, I was thinking, actually, I was thinking hibernation, that's that's over the winter, isn't it?

Winter months.

So they wake up in spring.

When is spring, in your mind, roughly?

When's it start?

March, I think, or

spring.

Beginning of spring.

Let's go March, April, for the purposes of what I'm about to say.

Easter.

Yeah.

What happens at Easter?

Egg searches.

Oh, mum, I found an egg.

Lovely stuff.

I found an egg.

Is it a chocolate egg?

I said, let's find out by cutting it in half.

No, it wasn't a chocolate egg.

And it's tragedy all over again.

I've cut it in half with a spade, mum.

Turns out it's

as a child ordinarily would do in the back garden

with a miniature chocolate egg

to check if it was really a chocolate egg.

You'd think, oh god, they're so realistic now, these eggs.

They've made one which looks like a tortoise and it actually moves around.

Something that's been named egg.

It's not realistic anymore.

And it actually goes, stop, stop, don't, as you wield the as you wield the uh

as you wield the shovel oh dear i um found a dog this week a lost dog

yeah

i went for a walk in the countryside

it's quite a long story but basically this guy is lost i'm already starting to feel that you've stolen a dog ben again because there's another one where it's tricky to if you've seen a dog in the country you've instantly put it in the back of your

convertible sab

and you

it came with a dog walker attached It's really convenient.

With a screaming dog walker.

It was like, no, gone, what happened?

I was walking along.

An old lady said, have you lost a dog?

I said.

You've got that look about you.

Sorry, sir.

She said, oh, okay.

Well, I found a dog and I've given it to a farmer.

Well, is that a good move?

He'll sausage it before you know.

He'll just sausage it as his instincts.

So then I went for my walk and on the way back to my car, I came across a man looking panicked.

And I thought, he looks like a man who maybe has lost a dog.

So I said, have you lost your dog?

And he said, yes.

But he's also lost his wife because she'd gone looking for the dog, but then he couldn't find his wife.

And there was no reception.

And he's like, I can't lose both in one go.

That's never happened.

Not both.

So I said, look, I'll go and try and find the farmer who's got your dog and you go and find your wife.

Then I had to go to the village, knock some doors.

You took control of the situation, Ben.

I'm quite impressed.

I did feel quite good about myself.

I knocked on some doors, spoke to some local people.

Then a man said, Oh, I'll take you to the farmer.

But then he couldn't walk me all the way to the farm because he realized that a woman was coming around to give some medicine to his hedgehogs.

All these anecdotes you're doing are completely reinforcing my views

of non-London life,

of life beyond zone five.

All it is is a series of mishaps involving tortoises, dogs, hedgehogs, and wives.

Oh, egg.

You think you carry your home on your shoulders,

but you don't.

That's not the truth.

Your home is next door to Mike with Bob and Ruth.

Hello, Mike.

Hi.

I'm just editing the most recent Beans episode, and I've got a little question for you.

Okay, shoot.

Your next-door neighbours who own the tortoise egg,

are they called Bob and Ruth?

No.

And I mean, even if they were, I don't think we want to be releasing their names on the

pod.

Okay, then so

they're not called Bob and Ruth.

No, why?

Why do you what about Ruth?

Is it like another name on Ruth?

No no.

This feels like a bit of a shot in the dark, Ben, unless there's something else telling me.

What about um

is one of their names like even a half rhyme with truth?

Are they called Poppy and Duluth?

No, not even there's there's there's no rhyme, half rhyme, not even a a sniff of assonance, I'm afraid, with with the name Ruth.

Sorry.

What what is this?

What are you up to, Ben?

No, no, uh don't worry about that.

No.

Come on, Spill the Beans.

What are you doing?

You're up to something.

I can sniff it.

No, no, no.

I'm just wondering.

I was actually just wondering.

It's just

one of those things.

You go,

I wonder if they're called Bob and Ruth.

You don't idly wonder, Ben.

If there's one thing anyone knows about you, you don't idly wonder.

You have a scheme.

What is it?

No, it's nothing to worry about.

Alright, thanks, Mike.

Bye.

Bye.

Mike tore open his chest for you.

He cracked his ribs asunder.

Please tell us which bush you're sleeping under.

Ladies and gentlemen, on the electric guitar, Nigel Havers.

Cool.

What's this?

Hello?

Ben, it's Mike.

Oh, hi, Mike.

Hi, yeah.

This thing about my next-door neighbours.

Yeah, Bob and Ruth.

I can't concentrate.

It's dwelling on me.

What are you doing?

You're doing something.

I want you to coffee it up now.

What do you mean?

You're writing writing one of your little songs, aren't you?

No.

You are?

Be truthful, because it's not appropriate for you to be writing jingles about my next-door neighbours.

No, no, I guess that was fair.

Yeah.

What's happening?

Have you made it already?

Well, in the process of.

Ben, how many times?

I think you're stifling my creativity, Mike.

I think that's what's happening.

Yes, which is what I'm here for.

That is my job on the podcast.

If you want to write a jingle, you have to run it up the flagpole.

At the top of the flagpole, there's me, and I yay it or I nay it.

I'm naying it.

Okay, do you understand?

Yes.

Right, kaibosched.

Thank you.

Good day, Benjamin.

See ya.

Bye.

Bye.

Nigel.

Yeah, I don't think you need it.

Sorry.

I'll see you at Darts, though.

Now, before we turn on the bean machine,

an announcement about merchandise.

If you go to threebeamsonardshop.com, This fresh new merch.

Henry's been busy in his little cabin.

I've been hard at it in my little illustration cabin.

There are new t-shirts.

There's new t-shirts.

But more exciting than that.

Not to do down the excitement of the new t-shirts.

But for me, the most exciting thing is there's a new jigsaw.

There's a new jigsaw, people.

Oh, yeah.

There's a new 3-bean salad jigsaw.

Well, the last one caused quite a stir, didn't it?

This one's quite different, I think.

Yeah, the last one ended marriages.

It pushed a lot of people to the edge, didn't it?

But actually, a lot of people came back from the edge stronger.

Very much so.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And with a steady determination to

buy another jigsaw.

Well, to buy another jigsaw and or anonymously murder people in service stations.

There was two ways of responding to it.

It really was a mindcracker.

But this one is.

I think it's going to be challenging, but more within the normal scope of, you know, sort of, I'm not breaking the sort of human rights code.

Yeah.

I'm not breaking the Human Rights Act as much as I was in the last one.

Yeah, you're not going to get an Interpol red notice like you did last time for this.

I'm out of the FBI's most wanted.

I'm out of the top 10 now for the first time in a year.

A big, big shout out to El Chapo, who's gone back into the top 10 as Henry dropped out.

That's right.

He's back in my birth.

He's taking my birth back off me.

Yeah, because the previous jigsaw, I designed it.

I wasn't obeying the basic rules of jigsaws.

I didn't know them.

Which is don't have a huge expanse of just blue.

Don't have a huge expansion.

I was fresh, I was young.

I'm not going to lie, I was bloody horny when I was designing it.

I was.

And, you know,

we all remember our first jigsaw that we designed, don't we?

And yeah,

basically, I didn't know the rules.

So I didn't even know if

that I was breaking them.

This jigsaw is like a whodunit.

You know, it respects the rules of whodunit, which is...

It was the first witness that gets interviewed whodunit.

Isn't it?

That's what happens in a whodunit.

Normally, the most famous actor as well.

If it's Neil Neil Morrissey, you're like, oh, it's him.

Oh, it's James Nesbitt.

That's probably him.

It's not going to be the guy I'm having to look up on IMDb, Stuart Winchester.

It's not going to be Stuart Winchester, is it?

Because I've had to look him up on IMDb.

So, so the previous jigsaw I did was a bit like watching a Whodone It, where

it was Stuart Winchester who done it.

And they'd be absolutely furious.

Whereas this one, it's challenging, but within the rules of the game, essentially.

I think it's really good, genuinely.

I mean, I'm not necessarily a huge aficionado, but I think this one, yeah, I think you've done it.

I think you've cracked it.

It's a good jigster, I think.

Yeah, it's not just endless sea, it's not endless desert, it's not just the inky depths of space and nothing else.

Exactly.

It's busy.

It's busy.

Yeah.

It's only two pieces this time, as well, isn't it?

It's two pieces.

So it's basically...

It's almost just like a mouse pad, isn't it?

I mean,

it's almost like a placemat.

If it wasn't for the one.

It's like a make your own placemat.

It's a make your own placemat.

Although, you know what?

I did consider

because there is a little bit of part of me which is a bit of a punk when it comes to these things.

Because you show me a rule book, where is it?

I don't know because I've already threw it out the window before you showed it to me.

I came in and came to the meeting room early.

I took the rule book that you inherited me, I threw it out the window, replaced it with a book called There Are No Fucking Rules by Henry Patton.

And you didn't actually come to the meeting early, you came to the previous meeting that late.

Late, exactly, because I didn't come to meetings early.

I was that late with the previous meeting.

I had to walk, well, I had to put in a meeting just so I could be late for it.

Just with me, actually.

So it's it's not, well, I was technically using it as an office space, not as a meeting.

But

Carol doesn't ask questions.

But why did you order all the catering, though, Henry?

If it was just you.

They brought in 20 pastries.

Those come from a different budget, Carol, don't they?

And as we know, Carol, you can help yourself to a pastry.

And more than that.

If you want, but don't know how your marriage is going.

How's your marriage going?

Are you seducing Carol?

I think he's offering

another pastry to Carol's spouse.

I don't know.

It gets so confusing with the

sexual politics between me and Carol.

I was like, I'd write a book about it.

Which is the other book, Underneath the Rulebook, which you've inadvertently just given me a book deal on by signing out a piece of paper.

Yeah.

Which Carol's net Carol is now throwing out of the window.

Also, by the way.

I don't know if any of you noticed this meeting room doesn't have a window.

Because it's a sell, because you're in police custody, because you're that much of a rebel

because of all the emails you've been sending, Carol.

It's not okay anymore.

It's not okay anymore.

For fuck's sake.

Right.

Anyway,

that's what it's like doing the jigsaw.

Not only is the new stuff on the website, threebean saladshop.com, if you were to buy from the website between the 6th, which is the Friday coming up, and the 8th of December, so that's Friday to Sunday, 2024, postage is free.

Ooh.

That's a sweet, sweet deal.

And for the first time, we've got a beefcake jenny t-shirt.

Oh, yeah.

Perfect for any gym buddies that you might have or just anyone.

And also, don't reduce the market, Henry.

Don't narrow the market, Henry.

Don't narrow the market, Henry.

Perfect for everyone you might know.

Yeah, if it's on a V-shaped chest or any shaped chest.

Any shaped chest.

Perfect for a wedding, christening.

Yeah.

Baptism.

Bermitzva, whatever.

Also.

It has to be a religious service.

It has to be a religious service.

service.

Or, also,

there's a Flightless Bird Zone t-shirt, which people have probably been clamoring for for ages, maybe.

Yeah, that's my favourite news.

Yeah, there's a Flightless Bird t-shirt as well.

There's also a whole new range of bluebell-based merch.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And maybe a few little secret surprises.

Are there?

I don't think there are.

Anyway, 3bean saladshop.com is the place to go.

Okay, let's turn on the bean machine.

Yes, please.

Okay, this week's topic, as sent in by Stephen from Utrecht.

Ooh.

Thank you, Stephen.

Thanks, Stephen.

Is

the Netherlands.

Fair play.

Fair play.

You've got to give that a fair play, haven't you?

No, also, I mean, I know they're not the same thing.

Holland is a word that's thrown around.

Yeah.

I think Holland is to the Netherlands as England is to the United Kingdom.

Right, okay.

Oh, really?

And the Netherlands itself includes Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland.

When you say the Netherlands, not only, well, no, the Dutch equivalent of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland.

Yes, which is what?

A bit of it.

Smaller provinces.

I think Holland is the biggest bit of the Netherlands.

I might be wrong.

No, I think you know, I think you're exactly right.

I think you're bang on.

But those little extra bits, we don't know what they are, do we?

No, I'm going to name one.

Okay.

I'm going to name one.

The bit of Netherlands that I can remember the name of, I think it's Friesland.

Friesland.

Which is where Frisians are from.

Is it?

The pony.

The dog.

The cow.

The jumper.

I don't know what it is.

No, Britain's most populous cow.

Oh, sorry.

Frisian cows.

Yeah.

Are they from Holland?

Yeah.

Is that the classic kids' cow, the black and white, like square body,

black patches?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Classic, feminine eyes

massive udders that are a bit too big for them that have been give them leg problems yeah we've already bred them into a corner those animals but um yeah that's what that's that's what you're talking about i think the netherlands is like um it's like an agricultural powerhouse isn't it there's a lot of um

sort of big

uh covered conservatory sort of thing yeah yeah greenhouses like big is that tulips and veg well i think it's also like veg yeah they just got is it it just very fertile land, is it?

Yeah.

I guess it must be.

But listen, I think if you want to know the history of the Netherlands and also the history of the economic structures of Europe, it's basically about irrigation.

Over to you.

Thank you.

So basically, you know, there's something to do with irrigation and flatness and banking.

And tulips and veg and banking and irrigation, isn't it?

Also, I feel like, you know, like the history of Europe.

So Britain and France have got this antagonistic relationship sort of still exists in the columns of Clarkson.

Right.

And there's a kind of like cultural memory of the fact that they've been our enemy and we had to fight Napoleon.

It sort of hangs around

the public consciousness, I think.

Both in Britain and France.

I think in France, there's that thing of like any idiom that's like negative is all about Britain.

So it's like he has quite a British face.

He's a very ugly man.

You've Britain all over the sheets again.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's this kind of cultural memory of that.

But I don't feel like we have any of that with the Netherlands.

I've got no idea.

Were we at war with the Low Countries?

Were they our valued ally?

I've got no idea.

That's interesting, isn't it?

I think they would have been in and out of alliances, wouldn't they?

In the sort of

colonial era.

Well, we've got a bit of royal blood stuff.

It's the William of Orange that is all that line, isn't it?

Yeah, he was Dutch.

He was Dutch.

And he

did he have some descendants who sat on our throne or they're sort of Protestanty, right?

Maybe that's part of it.

See, that bit is sort of Protestanty.

So

if there were people who were getting involved in papist plots, this is me really.

I mean, you know this.

I don't know what I'm talking about.

Desperately trying to scrabble in the limited part of the world.

Which are doing that, though.

For something somewhere about something.

Luckily, I've managed to create my persona around the idea of ignorant pig.

Yeah, yeah.

So luckily, which makes it quite a lot easier for me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Slightly charming, ignorant pig.

But if you wanted to get involved in a plot against some papists,

you'd be more likely to sort of talk to your friends over

in Holland, right?

Than

some conspirator in France.

Yeah, because Holland, it's non-chintzy, isn't it?

It's austere.

So it's like wood panelling.

You know, like those Vermeer interiors is wood panelling.

Yeah, jugs.

Jugs.

Jugs.

Plain jugs.

Yeah.

They'll be basically almost all the sensuality and sort of licentiousness has to be expressed through the medium of painting jugs.

So you get the most incredibly cavacious, glossy, shiny jugs just in the background.

In the foreground, there'll be an austere-looking guy with a skull next to him

holding a scroll and just looking really, really grim-faced.

But you look at that jug.

Top right, that corner, on that shelf in the corner, that jug.

And it's basically essentially the porn of its day, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You'd look at a picture of a jug,

find a jug under a bush, smuggly home.

And of course, the 1980s porn industry essentially descended from that, doesn't it?

That's why top shelf, top shelf magazines, because often that jug is on the top shelf in the back of a Dutch interior.

Well, that's what the printing press was invented to see if we can make jugs flat and therefore transport them more easily.

That was the whole purpose initially.

I had nothing to do with printing by exactly.

But yeah, the Dutch interiors, yeah, so it's the, whereas, yeah, obviously your paper interior has got a lot of velvet, a lot of...

Oh, yeah, loads of paintings of people getting shot by arrows by a little baby with wings and all that kind of business.

All that sort of business.

So Amsterdam is a fantastic place.

I'm not the first to say that, but I've been to

Amsterdam quite a few times over the years.

And what happens is as you go through life, your experience of Amsterdam changes.

And essentially, you move further away from the station.

So when you first go to Amsterdam, it's on just like holiday, sort of lads' holidays and stuff.

Anyway, I do.

But I've been once and I went on holiday with my parents, and I was probably 13.

So that's my first Amsterdam.

Okay, so that's that was a probably,

I'm picturing a lot of weed smoked.

It's weed, it's sex booths,

it's it's your mother and father hiring a sex booth while you took photos of it from the street.

And then the Van Gogh Museum.

Well, they give you a cannabis-infused wimpy burger.

Because there's like a penis museum or something, isn't there?

Of course there is.

So basically the central bit around the station is basically the most

it's kind of hell on earth, but I loved it as a when i went as probably like an 18 to 20 year old that kind of but it's basically around the station there's like horrible multi-level pubs there's like the sex museum it's just like utterly grotty and seedy neon lit really depressing sort of sex worker areas everyone's smoking doobie and it's just like absolutely hideous i'd say on almost any scale but that's also true of any area near a station in europe I might have mentioned this before because I stayed in Frankfurt

overnight because I was getting a plane from Frankfurt because it was cheaper if I stayed in Frankfurt overnight.

So I was like, I'll go for it.

I thought I'll find a hotel near the station because that'll be easy for me to get to the airport.

And the area on the station was so seedy that I got back to my room after having gone for a little walk around and had to Google the words, Can you passively smoke crack?

Oh my god.

Can you passively end up in a sex booth?

Really grotsy.

But I get the sense that Amsterdam is like, that's still a fun bit, right?

Or is it not at all fun?

It's just more flagrant in Amsterdam, though, right?

And there is a very specific reason that a lot of people are there, or two reasons why a lot of like

lads on tour are there or whatever.

I don't know if we've talked about this before, but it's because I think we have talked about this and we worked out.

It's because stations are the ports of the land.

Yeah, I remember that phrase.

That phrase changed my life.

So yeah, I do remember.

It's ended the vernacular.

Yeah, stations of the ports of the land.

Obviously, it's just taken as read that a port

will have drugs and dockside bars, doxide bars, bordellos, yeah, bordellos, dodgy deals happening, but also you can change, you know, you can buy a new face, you can change your, you can start again.

In a way, there

might be some interesting street poetry and stuff happening, you know what I mean?

Like, it's also places where actually

culture ferments, new life can grow.

If anyone's been to Houston, for example,

you'll, you,

you'll have noticed that, well, there's a mezzanine Leon, for example.

And a pretty decent-sized WH Smith.

Yeah, it's not bad, that WH Smith.

The other thing which Central Amsterdam has,

which I remember thinking was the coolest thing ever on these early trips to Amsterdam, was,

again, we may have discussed this quite a long time ago on the pod.

It's called Phibo.

Do you know what that is?

No, you've definitely mentioned Phibo.

So Phibo

was this weird, slightly sort of analogue prediction of what the future of food might look like

from like the 80s, which is basically you walk into it,

it felt very blade runner.

It's basically a street-side sort of set of shelving.

And you put money in, you select from a photo, from a photo, you select some sort of breadcrumb-coated coated deep-fried cheese ball

and it could be like a ham cheese ball or a mustard cheese ball

and you and you you put the money in and then and then you wait for a second then a little a little cupboard goes

flips open and there's a just inside there's a little shelf and your hot cheese your hot ham and cheese breadcrumb covered hot cheese ball is sitting in it and you take it out bite into it and scream in agony

that feels like probably it was a progenitor of uh screg

Exactly.

It was very much a pre-Skrag.

It was a progenitor of Scrag.

And yet there was more choice than Skreg.

There was more choice than Scraggy.

Shreg or just getting Scregg.

You're just getting Scragg.

But what happened?

It was kind of like, it basically, it kind of

was marketing itself as like the future of food.

Like Steel Cybernetics, Then, open a drawer, Then's shelf, Neil food comes out,

no people.

But if you just looked through the back of the shelf, you could see through a gap, just be like a really bored-looking guy just like cooking, deep-frying balls of cheese.

It's like, it's not really the the future of it's actually almost it's almost like this isn't it future it's just like a normal restaurant but with loads of shelves in between me and the the guy tipping the cheese balls no windows for the guy no windows for the guy because it's all taken up by a shelf where natural light would have been it's just a series of shelves

so that was um that was feebo

because what this is just reminding me of something i like about holland and it's true of a lot of the mid-countries mid the mid-countries so we've got talk about the low countries but you mind no one ever talks about really the high countries

as you say, the mid-countries.

I don't really know what they are, but somewhere in the middle of Europe, there's a kind of flat mid-countries zone.

I think Germany's got a bit of this going on.

Holland,

Flemmark.

Is that a place?

Belgium is in there.

Yeah.

That zone, one thing I like about that zone is it's

the palate,

the taste is for food, essentially

it's quite similar to British.

Yeah.

Like you'll get, just there's a lot of grey slash beige deep-fried cheese with not a hint of a vegetable or anything.

Hot salty stuff.

Hot salty stuff.

Do you know what I'm talking about, Ben?

Washed down with strong lager.

Exactly.

There's a lager and salty.

Popper sausage in it if it's

high days and holidays.

Sausage, ham, and cheese are just on a rotation on menu.

So we could go for the ham and cheese sausage ball.

We could go for the cheesy sausage ham ball.

On the ham and cheese sausage sausage ball, sausage and sausage, ham and cheese, or the ham and sausage, cheese sausage.

What's it going to be?

This is a completely out-moded stereotype, I'm about to say,

but I think

in my mind, my stereotypical picture of a holiday in Middle Europe is I'm on an incredibly efficient, beautiful train.

So in my mind, it's like everything works brilliantly, but

on the telly, their telly is just like a guy dressed as a badger, like shitting on a policeman's hat

while someone plays a banjo going.

Which has been running for 40 years.

It is still the most popular show across all age groups.

Yeah, exactly.

Every year on Christmas Day, they watch it all day.

Yeah, exactly.

And everyone has to dress up as a different one, either the policeman's hat or

they only pause it for 20 minutes where they play a section of an episode from Coronation Street.

It's the same episode from 1987 that they all watch.

Which they're weirdly obsessed with.

But that's not unfair.

No, it's not unfair because it's totally true that television in europe is terrible i think certainly in the 80s i think there was a sense that britain is a pretty grim depressing shripe place but but like the pop music everyone's listening to that in europe they're listening to to duran duran they're listening to um

to the spandau ballet and they're listening to david bowie david bowie and they're listening to depech depeche mode was a big one yeah it was big in europe but not not even big in britain weirdly it was like much bigger in europe everyone was listening to dependen when i was in holiday in the netherlands when i was i think it was 13, they were experiencing a, you know, very occasionally in the pop charts, something will be number one for like 15 weeks.

Yeah.

So the classics in Britain are: everything I do, I do it for you.

That was

I remember living through that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the wet, wet, wet one?

Oh, Jesus.

Yeah, yeah.

Love it.

Gorgeous boys, though, to be fair.

Gorgeous boys.

Gorgeous boys.

Gorgeous boys.

Multi and the boys.

Lovely boys.

In the Netherlands, they were having that, and the song was

Life, oh life.

Oh, no.

Oh, life.

Think I'll make a piece of toast.

Life.

You know what?

Weirdly, I read the lyrics of that song about a month ago for some reason.

Yeah.

I googled it, read the lyrics.

Desiree's life.

Yeah.

Oh, life.

Some of the worst lyrics ever in a pop song, really.

Yes.

They were absolutely obsessed.

And literally, every car that drove past, it was coming out with the speakers.

Every shop you went into, it was playing.

Like, it was uncanny.

It was really weird.

But they loved it.

Life.

I'm going to a park, especially when I'm in the dark.

Something, something, something, something.

Think I'll have a piece of toast.

Like, Like, Western, not a lyric that's ever, you can never put that in because everyone, while writing or creating anything, has thought I'm going to have a piece of toast, but you don't put it in the thing.

That's in the forefront of all three of our minds.

That's all we're thinking about.

We want a piece, of course, we want a piece of toast.

It's famously bad, isn't it?

And yet, the yeah, the theme is.

I mean, it's literally life.

Do you know what I mean?

You could have big life.

I mean, you could have

gone anywhere with it.

Yeah.

Now, generally,

I um

genuinely, just genuinely did want a piece of toast.

So true that song actually.

Okay, it's time to read your emails.

Yes, please.

When you send an email,

you must give thanks

to the postmasters that came before.

Good morning, Postmaster.

Anything for me?

Just some old shit.

When you send an email,

this represents progress.

Like a robot chewing a horse.

Give me your horse.

My beautiful horse.

If you'd like to email us, please do send it to threebean saladpod saladpod at gmail.com.

We've had an email from Henry.

Oh, another Henry.

Oh, well, very good.

And this regards an old episode in which Henry talked about cycling over a rat in Finsbury Park.

Yes,

he has a similar story.

Oh, yeah.

The last time the boating lake in Finsbury Park froze,

there was a dead swan.

Oh.

And it was drawing quite a crowd.

As children and parents alike leant forward towards this tragic sight, a rat burst from the chest cavity.

Good God.

You know what?

Up until that point, I was about to say that'd be a lovely centrepiece at a wedding, like a frozen swan.

It's quite beautiful.

Frozen dead swan.

A frozen dead swan.

But the rat chestburst has ruined that a bit.

Covered in blood and viscera.

It looked like the happiest rat in the world.

Everyone gasped.

I laughed, and then everyone looked at me.

Lot of love, Henry.

Oh, wow.

And can I say that is the best metaphor I've ever heard for the anti-monarchist element in this country?

Yeah.

A nicely warm, well-fed rat.

Thriving rat.

Gosh, that's quite an image.

You know what that reminds me of?

That reminds me of once.

I went for a nice little walk.

One of the most horrifying sights I've seen was I went for a nice walk by the Thames once.

And

floating down the Thames, I saw a dead rat.

But something had happened where its viscera was sort of exposed and a huge bubble

made of like intestine, some sort of intestinal bubble, really, really quite big, bigger than the rat,

was keeping it kind of floating.

So it's like a dead rat floating along in its own kind of intestinal balloon.

It's really

absolutely horrendous and sort of weird.

Henry, I mean, think of the art and the literature that that rat would have inspired on its way down the Thames.

Yeah, all the creatives who would have seen it floating along.

Exactly.

It's another way living somewhere like London, isn't it?

To see those kind of things.

Exactly.

Every two or three feet, there's going to be another artist of some sort.

Inspired.

Poem sequences, plays would have been inspired by episodes of East Enders.

The episode where Phil Mitchell has a huge intestinal bubble coming out of his ass.

I was very inspired by that.

Soho, Battersea, Old Southwark, Streatham,

Vauxhall, Tuffmall Park, Barnett, technically, Madame Two Swords, the Senate of

Halfers,

Zone 5.

Mind the gap between your provincial existence and this metropolitan utopia.

Next stop, urban enlightenment.

The glamorous London life of Henry Backer.

Hang on a second.

Is that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber?

No, it can't be.

Because you're Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I know.

So thank you, Henry, for that.

That was a wonderful story.

I'm interested in other rat stories.

What's the most horrifying rat situation you've ever seen?

Yeah, great question.

Can we beat a rat bursting out of the chest, alien-like, from a swan?

Of a king-owned, one of the noblest beasts.

In terms of like portents, it's pretty

it's a pretty bad one, isn't it?

A rat bursting out of the chest of a frozen swan.

Kind of like a grotesque Advent calendar.

Yeah,

we've had an email from

Graham.

Hello, Graham.

Thanks, Graham.

This refers to an old episode where we talked about daughter-door fish salesman.

Yes.

My sister got got by that.

Possibly even the same guy.

But really?

Someone who matched your description precisely.

She got fished.

Really?

The experience you described was just replicated entirely, every last detail.

And did she buy the fish?

She did buy the fish, but she's a soft target for these type of people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You've got to have real nerves of steel to turn these people away.

It's really hard not to.

Which we're still, we're kind of exploring it, aren't we?

And we're piecing together what it's about.

But we've got evidence now from Mike that it's a thing and potentially from this emailer.

Door-to-door Geordie fishmongers, who they sort of lure you in with a sort of siren song.

Is it sort of Geordie siren?

It's increasingly sounding like it's a credible thing.

I mean, it's still, there is still a cat that thinks it's a kind of sort of mass hallucination.

We don't know.

Which is also possible.

Well, let's see what Graham has to say.

He says, back in my days as a hip young guy in the big city, I was off to work one morning when my then-girlfriend asked what we should have for dinner.

Some fish, maybe?

I replied, expecting her to pick up a small bit of cod or maybe even sea bass from the supermarket by the time I got back home.

Instead, when I got back, I was greeted with three freezer drawers full of the stuff.

What the hell happened?

I asked.

Well, a nice man knocked on the door, offering to sell me some of the freshest fish she'd ever seen.

By the time I realised what was happening, one of them had started unloading the crates from the van.

That's what happened.

While the charmer of the pair handed me the card machine.

It all happened so fast.

She never did tell me exactly how much it cost, but safe to say, six months later, when we left that flat, most of the fish was still very much in that freezer.

That's from Graham, now married to said girlfriend.

I was going to say, good, okay.

Living our best provincial lives in Bristol.

Lovely stuff.

Well, I assume they've not had a visit because we've not had them this far west.

Maybe Bristol is...

Well, it's cold to Newcastle, isn't it?

Selling fresh fish in...

also Rick Stein's got I mean Rick Stein would quite literally kill you using five live crabs

that's what he quite literally does it's too close to pad style he's got the west country he's got he's got the west so yeah

it's the quantity that's

you know what it is it's the they're using quantity

you end up buying just just way more because buying some fish isn't the end of the world i mean and i think they are fish It's not like they've taken cheap ham and shaped it into a fish, which actually now come to think of it as not a bad business idea.

do you want us to edit that out and then all of that too that we can

before you have the chance to secure

and let's get some meetings in yeah

i'm thinking theopothetis i'm thinking i'm thinking um ridley scott

i'm thinking

the beckhams yeah

the beckhams i think we're going to want big celebrity tie-ins so what we want is like for instance like next time messy scores a goal for miami he pulls off his shirt and he's he's got a fish he's got a ham fish hasn't he or it turns out it was actually a messy that was made out of ham in the shape of messi dressed as a fish and the whole thing falls apart into delicious fishy flakes of ham

uh no so so it's the quantity that you buy because i think you're looking at it you're going well look i can eat fish this you know i'll i i'll buy i can buy fish it's the then you realize you've got so much fucking fish that it's just what am i going to do with all this fish well we've got several emails about people who've been Geordie fish.

Oh, really?

Okay, brilliant.

So, should we hear some more?

Yeah, let's do this.

So, this is from Spanner.

About 13 years ago, I was a new mum.

I was fleeced by an unregulated Geordie Daughter Door fish salesman.

This was in Sheffield.

And I was quite new to the area.

I simply could not understand what they were saying.

Yeah.

It was talking about getting a freezer pack and splitting it.

He kept saying something that sounded like 80, 80, 80.

And I had no concept of whether he meant that.

That's the Geordie maths.

You see, I can't lose.

Because what they do is, because

they charm you, they've got sparkling eyes, and they've got that lovely lilting Geordie siren song.

It's a great deal, love.

We'll split it eaty, eat it, eat it.

Everyone gets earty, eat it, eat it.

And it's like, I know eighty, it doesn't sound like it makes sense mathematically, but 20, you take earty from 100, you've got a spare 20, then you've got another eat from the local hundred, you've got a spare twenty.

You get four ear tears together, you got four spare twenties, makes a little bit eaty.

And by that point, you just like just just stick 4 000 prawns in this bucket please

you know what you know what i've got three sons i'm not that big a fan of harold harold move out your room is now a fish storage area

just load as many fish as you can you can you get straight into harold's window so spanner says i have no concept of whether he meant 8 pounds 88 or 88 pounds 80

or something else that's the magic of the john devoice the siren song you don't know is it 88 pounds or pounds of flesh or pounds of money or pounds of prawns or pounds or panic or pounds of fish or pounds?

Cheese or pounds.

You don't know.

In the end, I spent over 80 pounds on a huge amount of fish, which took years to eventually eat.

It does.

Oh, we've had another email from Hannah.

Yeah.

Henry's story about Dorster Geordie fish salesman reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine.

Their house was visited by a fish salesperson who gave her husband the hard sell.

Ten minutes later, he triumphantly came back into the house carrying an industrial-sized polythene box filled with all kinds of fish.

It's so awful.

I got such a good deal, love.

Oh, I know.

That's exactly.

This is a horrible moment.

You think you've smashed it and then it gradually dawns on you.

You're like, yeah, because you're top of the world.

You're like, I can't believe I'm literally holding like...

It's 80, 80, 80.

You don't understand this 80, 80, 80.

I've got 80, 80, 80 on cons.

I've got so many eels,

I could cover a tennis court in these eels.

I've won life.

I always felt, you know what?

I always felt there was something special about me and actually was going to come and it's happened.

It's happened.

So he says, I got such a good deal, love.

He exclaimed.

Darling, she replies.

Yes, he replies.

We don't like fish.

He had indeed looked deep into those Geordie eyes and fallen hook line and sinker.

Yeah.

Wow.

So I've got loads more emails about this happening to people.

There's a phenomenon.

It's happening.

Yeah.

Rather than reading out the whole emails, I'll give you a sense of what's going on out there.

Okay.

So Jamie from Coldingham in Berwickshire,

not far from the home of the Geordies.

15 years ago, his wife's mother, Maureen,

spent £250 on cod mackerel and had.

And she's going to be feeling sick as a parrot about that.

Maureen, but it's happened.

You're not alone, Maureen.

That's what it's, this is what she, there needs to be support groups for these people because Maureen would have been heartbroken about it.

Hello, my name's Henry.

And I yesterday I bought four tons of sardines.

Talking about it is the first step, isn't it?

Graham from Buckinghamshire, he writes, one day between work calls, someone knocked on the door and managed to convince me to buy a box of fish steaks and a 60-pound bag of scallops.

I'm living proof that they don't just exclusively target mums.

No, no, no.

So, you know, this is.

But again, he's like, he's distracted.

He's in the middle of a working day.

Like, he's, do you know what I mean?

He's like, there's stuff going on.

He's got stuff to do.

It's in that space that the Geordie travelling fishmonger is able to

slip in.

Anyway, thank you to everyone who emailed us about their Geordie fish experiences.

I'm interested if anyone can beat the £250 in terms of how much people have spent on a door-to-door fish transaction.

If we can beat £250, I'd be pretty pleased.

It's time

to play the ferryman

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forward slash three bean salad

Thanks to everyone who signed up at our Patreon Patreon.com forward slash threebean salad.

Oh, yes.

What's there for you?

There's our bonus episodes, which is extra chat on the topics from the month.

So we'll have talked more about the Netherlands than you heard here, but it's only available on Patreon.

Also, we do occasional film review podcasts.

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There's lots there.

Just loads of good fun content.

There are various tiers to sign up at.

And if you sign up at the Sean Bean tier, you get a shout out from Mike from the Sean Bean Lounge.

You You certainly do.

Where Mike spent the weekend.

I did indeed.

Yes.

A wonderful time, thank you.

Well, you certainly weren't hungry afterwards, were you, Mike?

Because it was the Use Up All the Stuff at the Back of Your Cupboards Mystery Pie competition.

It certainly was.

Thank you, Benjamin.

And here's my report.

It was the Use Up All the Stuff at the Back of Your Cupboards Mystery Pie competition last night at the Sean Bean Lounge.

Alexander Penny and Becca Such had the honourable task of removing the cupboards from the homes of all available bean loungers and reinstalling them in the Sean Bean Lounge pie-based competitive sports gridiron.

Keon Spillan and Ruth combined their backs of cupboard contents and rustled up a savoy and seedwood mothball pie.

Emma Prindle went for a puff pastry number, ambitiously filled with obsolete dishwasher manual and eight-year-old Panettone.

And Ben Casseroll put a thumb in the eye of nominative determinism with a noose torture made from pickled walnuts and a sheaf of love letters left behind by a previous tenant.

The Svelte Bass, K.

Knowles 123, Ross Christian Carter, and Little Joey were all found to have smuggled victuals from the fronts of their cupboards in the backs of their trousers, and as such were sifted through a dusting wand and rubbed into cubes of room temperature butter.

Similarly, Mark Nicholas claimed to have discovered a perfect birthday cake with Happy 40th iced onto the top of it at the back of his cupboard and was about to pie it when Matt Bennett called foul, deputised Satchomet, and with him invoked a full back of cupboard audit.

It was discovered that Mark had paid Lucy Mulgrew to disguise herself as a buffet-style sideboard while Mark's real kitchen cupboard was whisked away on a Baltic Cruise for Two with Paul Wheeler.

Grandad Phil Sellers supplied Lucy with a black market birthday cake, and Lucy concealed this in the very papoose in which Chris Bull was being carried when he first said the words, Sean Bean.

This was slung over Lucy's front, while her actual back was used to make a fake back for the cupboard.

After the receipt of a pre-arranged signal, specifically His Excellency Vincent Williams himself throwing Ed Alvin into a pie made by the Almighty George out of 16 halfful jars of Chinese five spice, Lucy released the cake just as tirelessly corrupt cupboard adjudicator Annette Gibbons Warren, who was also on the payroll, inspected the forged cupboard and declared the cake at the back to be bona fide.

At this point, Ben Harris was confused.

He sought a recap and clarification from Zach Selden, who also hadn't been paying attention, but rather than admit that instead related the plot of the second installment from the Hunger Games movie franchise, Catching Fire, with improvised score provided by Chris E.

That might have distracted some pie chefs, but not David Cook, who left the crowd slack-jawed with a snazzy phyllo number filled with three tablespoons of pre-Brexit pomegranate molasses, what might have once been an apricot, and the corpses of 17 fruit flies.

Special commendations went to Tom Church and Joe Brett for their fresh goat leg in minted gravy pie with ingredients sustainably sourced from a backless Narnia cupboard.

Also commended was healthy Artholomew Bay for his savoury flan made with suspiciously non-putrid, despite being decades out of date, sliced ham and garnished with an Iron Maiden belt buckle he thought he'd lost.

But Pie Maker-in-Chief went to Rosalind Loggerson's spa with her short crust sensation made with a cured sardinian sausage she had no memory of buying.

Thanks all.

Okay, that's the end of the show.

We'll finish off with a version of our theme tune sent in by one of you.

And it's worth saying that we are very much open to your versions.

And also, if you've sent one in and we haven't played it, send it in again because it may have fallen through cracks.

Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And we do love them.

So, yeah, do send it again.

Anyway, this one is from Ed.

Thank you, Ed.

He says, please find attached my version of the main theme.

No guitars were used in the making of this this attempt.

Keep on beaning.

Yours beanly, Ed.

Well, thank you.

Thanks, Ed.

Thanks, Ed.

And thank you, all of you, for listening.

See you next week.

Ta-da!

Bye.

Bye.